Platform Terms of Use
Last updated: 20 October 2026
1. About these Terms
These Terms of Use govern access to and use of the Books By People digital platform - the software, its accounts and workspaces, and the certification workflows it runs.
They are not a commercial agreement. They do not deal with membership, fees, or the commercial relationship between Books By People Ltd and a publishing house. Those matters are governed by separate arrangements between Books By People and the publishing house concerned.
They also do not govern certification itself. Certification decisions, the Certification Standards, and use of the Certification Mark are governed by the Certification Regulations (clause 17).
These Terms apply to individuals who access or use the platform through an authorised account. Such users agree to comply with the Terms when they use the platform.
2. Who these Terms apply to
These Terms apply to everyone who uses the platform: administrators, directors and editors at a publishing house, and Books By People’s own staff.
Throughout these Terms, “you” and “your” refer to an individual platform account holder unless a provision expressly identifies a publishing house. Individual use of an account does not authorise that person to accept commercial terms on behalf of an employer.
Obligations expressly assigned to a publishing house, including its authority to submit manuscripts, remain the responsibility of that publishing house. Individual users must act within the authority and permissions granted to them.
3. About Books By People, and our other documents
Books By People Ltd (company number 16625520), Heaslands, Steep Road, Crowborough, England, TN6 3RX, operates the Books By People Certification Scheme. We are not a publisher.
These Terms govern the platform only. The Regulations Governing the Use of the Books By People Certification Mark (the Certification Regulations) govern the certification standards, determinations, and use of the Certification Mark. Separate agreements govern publishing house membership, fees and other commercial terms. Where there is a conflict about certification, the Certification Regulations prevail.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we process personal information. It is a separate legal notice, not part of these Terms.
4. Your account and signing in
Accounts are personal to each account holder. Users must not share accounts or access another person’s account.
Sign-in uses a one-time code sent to the account holder’s email address rather than a password. Codes and secure links are confidential credentials and must not be forwarded. Suspected unauthorised access should be reported to info@booksbypeople.org and the relevant publishing house.
Account holders must keep their account email address current. Losing access to the registered email address may also prevent access to the account.
We limit how often sign-in codes can be requested and tried, in order to protect accounts. Those limits are set well above ordinary use.
5. Publisher workspaces
Each publishing house has its own workspace. A house can see only its own information, and the platform is built so that one house’s works, cases, authors and manuscripts are not reachable from another’s.
Information uploaded to a publishing-house workspace is accessible to authorised colleagues according to their roles, and to Books By People personnel who need it for certification or platform operations.
6. Roles, permissions and access restrictions
A user’s permitted actions depend on the roles assigned by the publishing house. Roles define platform permissions rather than employment titles, and an individual may have more than one role.
The publishing house controls invitations and role assignments. Its designated primary administrator cannot be removed through the ordinary membership-management process.
Users must not attempt actions outside their assigned permissions or attempt to access another publishing house’s information. The platform enforces access checks on the server.
Books By People staff cannot act on behalf of a publishing house. Certain actions - including withdrawing a case that has not been submitted - can only be taken by somebody at the house with the right role.
7. Invitations and individual responsibilities
People are brought onto the platform by invitation from their publishing house. An invitation gives access according to the role the house chose.
Each invited platform user is responsible for:
keeping personal account access and sign-in codes secure;
using the platform only for authorised certification work;
ensuring the accuracy of information and materials that user submits;
not sharing access credentials with another person.
An invitation to the platform does not make the invited person a party to commercial arrangements between Books By People and the publishing house.
Authors are not platform account holders. Authors complete their declarations through secure links sent by Books By People on behalf of the publishing house.
Communications concerning certification cases are handled through the publishing house. However, authors may contact Books By People directly at submissions@booksbypeople.org regarding their personal information and data protection rights, as explained in our Privacy Policy.
8. Accurate information
Information recorded on the platform forms the basis of a certification application, so it must be accurate.
Platform users must not knowingly enter or submit false, incomplete or misleading information. Errors in submitted information should be reported to Books By People through the appropriate existing channel.
Where a case has not yet been submitted and its information is wrong, it may be corrected or withdrawn and restarted. Historical records remain; file contents are handled under section 14.
9. Written works and certification cases
A written work is registered and prepared in the workspace and then handed to us by starting a certification case.
Two platform steps are key:
Starting a certification case: The publishing house creates a case that becomes visible to Books By People. The work’s details are locked, but the publishing house can continue preparing the required documents.
Submitting the case files: Once the required materials are ready, the publishing house submits the case for certification review. This is when Books By People’s formal review begins.
A work that falls outside the Scheme is recorded as out of scope. That is not a refusal of certification, it never entered certification review, and the platform says so.
The platform imposes no deadlines on preparing a case. Long gaps between registration and submission are expected.
10. Uploading manuscripts and evidence
A case is submitted with its final manuscript together with the development drafts available to the editor, and any supporting material the house chooses to attach.
Where drafts that the declarations describe are not available, the house may record its account of why. That is not an exemption: the compliance report still records the gap, with the reason beside it.
Files must be within the formats and size limits the platform states. We may refuse or remove anything that is malicious, corrupt, or outside those limits.
Where a publishing house imports a manuscript using Google Drive, Books By People receives a copy and available document provenance information. Certification uses the imported copy, not a live Google document.
11. Authority to upload material
Platform users may upload only material they are authorised to submit.
Before submitting a work, the publishing house must have the necessary rights and author agreement to submit the manuscript, drafts and supporting evidence for certification and to permit the processing described in section 13. This includes ensuring the author understands that the work is being submitted for certification and is asked to complete the applicable declaration and certification steps.
The publishing house must not submit material in breach of copyright, confidentiality or another person’s rights. The author agreement and other publisher obligations under the scheme are dealt with in the relevant Certification Regulations and separate publisher arrangements.
12. Ownership of submitted material
We do not acquire ownership of anything uploaded to the platform. Copyright and every other right in a manuscript, a draft or supporting material stays with whoever owns it.
We take no position on who that is. A manuscript’s copyright may belong to the author, to the publishing house, or be shared between them, depending on their own arrangements. That is a matter between them, and uploading something to the platform does not change it.
13. Permission to process submitted material
The publishing house gives Books By People a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, technically copy, convert, examine and analyse submitted materials, to allow authorised personnel and service providers to handle them for certification, and to retain the resulting records and analysis evidence.
The permission relating to file contents ends when those contents are deleted under section 14. Records and analysis evidence may be retained as explained in our Privacy Policy.
We do not sell, publish, commercially license or use manuscripts, drafts or certification evidence to train or fine-tune AI models. Submitted material is used only to operate the service and carry out certification.
14. Confidentiality and security
Manuscripts are handled only by authorised Books By People personnel. They are stored and processed on infrastructure we control, operated under contract and bound by confidentiality, and are not shared with anyone else.
When a certification case is closed, including through a final determination, an eligible publisher withdrawal or an authorised Books By People administrative closure, the platform removes manuscript and supporting-file contents from active storage as part of its closure process. It retains file records, declarations, analysis results and audit history. Administrative closure does not itself amount to approval or refusal of certification.
We do not retain separate backups or recoverable deleted versions of manuscript files. Our database backups contain certification records, not manuscript contents. Once a case closes and deletion is completed, the submitted files cannot be restored through our storage or database backup systems.
We maintain appropriate access controls and security measures to protect confidential materials. Our confidentiality obligations continue after case closure or termination of platform access. Publishing houses should retain their own copies, as the platform is not a manuscript archive or backup service.
15. Author and editor declarations
A case requires a declaration from each named author and one from the editor.
The editor requests each author’s declaration from within the case. We then email the author a personal link on the publishing house’s behalf, with replies going to that editor. The author completes the declaration through that link, without an account.
The editor’s declaration must be signed; the author confirms theirs by typing their name.
Declarations cannot be edited once completed. A completed declaration is a permanent record. If a declaration is wrong before the case is submitted, the case can be withdrawn and started again; nothing recorded is deleted.
Declarations must be complete, internally consistent and truthful. Under the Regulations, a false, incomplete or misleading declaration is a ground for suspension or withdrawal of certification.
16. Software-assisted analysis and certification decisions
The platform runs software analyses of manuscripts and development drafts, and brings the results together in a Combined Compliance Report.
The focus is on evidence of how a work came to be written rather than on detection of AI. What the analysis produces is evidence, considered together with everything else submitted, as to whether the requirements of the certification procedure are met. Determinations are made by Books By People under the Certification Regulations.
We may change the analyses we use, and how they are implemented, as the scheme develops. Nothing in these Terms commits us to a particular method or tool.
17. Certification decisions and the Certification Mark
Certification outcomes, standards, reviews, and use of the Books By People Certification Mark are governed by the Certification Regulations, not by these platform Terms.
Certification is not guaranteed, and a certification decision confirms that the Scheme’s standards and process were applied to the evidence reviewed. It is not an absolute guarantee of human authorship.
Only formally certified works may use the Certification Mark, subject to the Certification Regulations. The Books By People Certification Mark is registered in the United Kingdom under registration number UK00004298040. If certification is withdrawn, use of the Mark must cease as required by the Regulations.
Disputes about certification decisions follow the applicable review and mediation process in the Regulations, rather than the platform dispute provisions in section 28.
18. Clarifications and Enhanced Review on the platform
Clarifications and Enhanced Review are workflows in the platform as well as steps in the certification procedure.
Where we ask for clarification, or open an Enhanced Review, the publishing house is told what is needed and is given the opportunity to respond through the platform before a final determination.
A clarification is ordinary. Enhanced Review is a formal escalation under the Regulations. It is a procedural step only.
We will not conclude an Enhanced Review on its merits without a response. Where no response is received, we may close the review as unanswered, without resolving the concern, and determine the case based on the available evidence. An unanswered concern may result in refusal.
Questions about a declaration are addressed to the publishing house, never to the author.
19. Acceptable use
The platform may be used only for authorised certification work. Account holders must protect their credentials and submit only relevant material they are entitled to upload.
20. Prohibited activities
You must not:
submit material you have no right to submit;
submit information or declarations you know to be false or misleading;
attempt to access another publishing house’s information, or any part of the platform your role does not permit;
probe, scan or test the platform’s security without our written permission;
interfere with the platform’s operation, or attempt to bypass rate limits or access controls;
scrape or bulk-extract information, including from the public directory or the verification pages;
reverse engineer the platform, or attempt to derive our analysis methods from its outputs;
share an account, a sign-in code, or an author’s declaration link;
upload malicious files;
use the platform to store material unrelated to certification.
21. Our intellectual property in the platform
Books By People owns or is licensed to use the platform, its branding, methodology, analysis tools, declaration templates, documentation and other proprietary material. This does not transfer ownership of manuscripts or supporting materials provided by a publishing house or author.
Do not reproduce, disclose, reverse engineer or share confidential Books By People methodologies, analysis material or proprietary documentation without permission, except as required by law. These confidentiality obligations continue after access ends.
Compliance reports may be used internally and for the certification procedure, but not published or supplied to third parties without Books By People’s agreement, unless the law requires otherwise.
22. Privacy
Our Privacy Policy describes the personal information we process, the purposes of processing, retention, disclosures and individuals’ rights. It is a separate notice applicable to the people whose information we handle.
Two points particularly relevant to publishing houses and their staff:
We are an independent controller of the personal information we handle for certification purposes, and not a processor acting on a publishing house’s instructions. We determine how certification is carried out and we make the certification determination.
Publishing houses and platform users supplying someone else’s personal data must have appropriate authority to provide it. Relevant individuals should receive information about Books By People’s processing and access to our Privacy Policy.
23. Service availability and changes
We aim to keep the platform available but do not commit to a service level in these Terms. Maintenance, updates and occasional interruptions are to be expected. Where we plan work likely to cause material interruption, we will give reasonable notice where we can.
We develop the platform continuously, and may add, change or remove features. We will not make a change that materially reduces the platform’s core certification functionality without reasonable notice.
24. Suspension and termination of platform access
We may suspend or withdraw access to the platform, or to an individual account, where:
these Terms are materially breached, or clause 20 is breached;
an account appears to have been compromised;
a publishing house’s authorisation under the Regulations is suspended or withdrawn, or its separate arrangements with us come to an end;
we need to act to protect the platform, its users, or the material held in it.
Except where we need to act urgently, we will give notice first and, where the matter can be put right, a reasonable opportunity to do so.
A publishing house or an individual user may stop using the platform at any time.
Suspension of a publishing house’s authorisation does not reach into a certification case already under review, and does not by itself change the status of a certification already issued.
25. What happens to records when access ends
Where an unfinished case is no longer being progressed, or a publishing house’s access has ended, Books By People will review the case and arrange for its closure within a reasonable period, in accordance with the applicable certification procedures. Manuscript and supporting-file contents will be deleted as part of the closure process described in section 14.
Certification and audit records remain, including declarations, analyses, decisions where made, relevant file metadata, case-closure information and activity history. These records are retained to preserve the integrity and traceability of the certification process.
Issued certifications and their public verification records remain subject to the Certification Regulations. Administrative closure does not constitute approval, refusal or withdrawal of an existing certification.
26. Disclaimers and liability
We aim to provide a reliable and secure platform, but we cannot guarantee that it will always be available, uninterrupted or free from errors. We do not guarantee any particular certification outcome or timeframe for review.
Analysis and certification do not constitute an absolute guarantee of human authorship.
Publishing houses and platform users are responsible for the accuracy of the information and materials they submit. Books By People remains responsible for carrying out its own obligations under these Terms and applicable law.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Nothing in these Terms affects rights under data protection law.
These Terms govern use of the platform. The allocation of commercial liability between Books By People and a publishing house is addressed in their separate agreements. Nothing in these Terms overrides those arrangements.
27. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms and will give reasonable notice of material changes. The ‘Last updated’ date indicates when these Terms were most recently revised. Continued use of the platform after revised Terms take effect constitutes acceptance by the user.
Changes to the Certification Regulations are made under the Regulations themselves, not under this clause, and some require the Registrar’s approval.
28. Governing law and jurisdiction
These Terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of use of the platform, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.
Clause 17 applies to any dispute about a certification decision, and this clause does not displace the review and mediation procedure in the Regulations.
29. General
No partnership or agency. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture or agency, and nothing makes us the publisher of any work.
Third parties. Nobody other than Books By People Ltd and the users and publishing houses to whom these Terms apply may enforce them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
Severance. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest stands.
No waiver. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
30. Contact
Books By People Ltd
Heaslands, Steep Road
Crowborough, England, TN6 3RX
Company number 16625520